Smartphone market set for biggest-ever decline in 2026 on memory price surge: Report
The Hindu
The global smartphone market is poised to suffer its biggest decline ever in 2026, sinking to a more than decade low in shipments, as surging memory chip prices drive up device costs, the International Data Corporation said
The global smartphone market is poised to suffer its biggest decline ever in 2026, sinking to a more than decade low in shipments, as surging memory chip prices drive up device costs, the International Data Corporation said on Thursday.
Smartphone shipments are expected to drop 12.9% to 1.12 billion units, the research firm said in a report.
The decline will hit low-end Android manufacturers the hardest, while Apple and Samsung are positioned to gain market share as smaller rivals struggle or exit the market entirely, the report said.
“What we are witnessing is not a temporary squeeze, but a tsunami-like shock originating in the memory supply chain,” said Francisco Jeronimo, vice president for Worldwide Client Devices at IDC.
A rapid build-out of AI infrastructure by tech firms such as Meta, Google and Microsoft has captured much of the memory chips supply, lifting prices as manufacturers prioritise components for higher-margin data centers over consumer devices.
Memory chips, or DRAM, are crucial to smartphones as they allow power-hungry applications to run smoothly.
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